Gwyneth
by Shadowxwolf
Summary: The Rift was sealed in 1869 by Gwyneth. More than a century later, strange apparitions are reported at the site, and Torchwood investigate. Gwen is most affected by these ghosts, but can the team discover the real secret before it's too late? Jack/Gwen
1. Chapter 1

If there is another fic out there that is like this one, I'm sorry. Trust me, i came up with this idea all on my own, so it's not plagerism.

So I was watching series 1 of Doctor Who (kindly borrowed off Grace), and I saw 'The Unquiet Dead' fully for the first time. Thn this idea showed up and has bugged me ever since. Enjoy!

* * *

The Rift alarm blared suddenly, shattering the run of non-activity the team had been enjoying for the past three days. A spike of Rift energy centred over a single point, too large for it just to be some small piece of space junk.

'Toshiko, monitor the fluctuations,' Jack barked coming down the stairs from his office, in control as always. 'Ianto, find out more about the address; Gwen, Owen, with me.' He shrugged on his greatcoat as the team snapped to their stations, Tosh at her computers, Ianto at his workstation, and the other two followed their boss sharply out of the Hub.

'Jack,' Ianto's voice came clearly over the comm. 'The building dates from 1736, and changed hands a lot – baker, chemist, butcher –'

'Candlestick maker?' Owen suggested lightly.

'No,' replied Ianto in his 'don't be ridiculous' voice. 'But it was a funeral home before it was burned down in 1869. Hasn't been occupied since. All through its history there have been stories about ghosts flying about.'

'Oh, great,' Owen muttered. 'Ghosts in a funeral home. Just once can't we have a gazebo or something?'

'Nonsense, Owen,' Gwen chided. 'You should feel right at home.' Owen just leered and Jack grinned, sorely tempted to catch her eye but knowing he should keep his eyes on the road.

The house was dilapidated when they arrived. It was nothing more than a desolate skeleton of charred bricks and beams. The upper floor windows stared gloomily at them like listless eyes.

'Cheery place,' Jack said brightly, his grin widening as Gwen rolled her eyes. 'Kay, team, split up – Owen, check upstairs, Gwen with me.'

Drawing their guns, the trio started cautiously into the house. It looked like someone had tried to renovate a few decades ago, but had abandoned their plan in a hurry. Half sawn planks lay haphazardly against walls, and building tools lay rusting where they had been flung to the ground.

'You getting anything Owen?' Gwen asked.

'Only a lot of weeds. My shoes are going to be filthy after this,' he complained into his comm.

'I'll take that as a no.'

'Toshiko,' Jack said. 'Can you pull the plans for this building?' One thing he hated was being blind.

'I'm on it now,' she assured him.

Jack followed Gwen into a back room, suddenly nervous. She was getting weird. Not much, but enough for him to pick up. Her gun wasn't raised completely and she seemed distracted, dreaming, as she explored the house. She stopped abruptly next to a mass of flame blackened timbers, apparently confused. One hand stretched out for the charred planks, and Jack watched perplexed as she heaved them aside, ready to spring to her defence should anything leap out at her. But nothing did. Instead, an aged door with a sooty brass handle appeared.

'How did you know that was there?' he asked. She blinked and wobbled, as if emerging from a trance.

'What?' she asked, glancing round as if wondering where she was. Her pale brow furrowed prettily with concentration.

'The door,' Jack said. 'You knew it was there?'

'No,' she started. 'I mean, I don't know. I could see it. Jack I don't feel very well.'

She did look a little white. Frowning , Jack placed the back of his palm against her forehead, trying to ignore the tingling that thrilled through him at the contact. She closed her eyes, flushing slightly, but there was no sign of fever.

'What kind of not well?' he questioned. No member of his team was any good ill. It could get them all killed if one of them wasn't on the ball. 'Do you want to wait in the SUV?' She looked defiantly up at him and shook her head.

'I'll be fine, it's just a little headache.'

'You're sure?' he checked.

'Yeah, I'm fine.' Jack didn't believe her, but her stubborn face was set, and he knew there was no point in trying to argue with her – they never had solved that power struggle since he'd got back.

'Let's see where this goes then, shall we?' he suggested, kicking the door in and moving down a short flight of steps. Gwen followed with a grim expression, clearly more sick than she was letting on; he despaired of her sometimes, he really did.

The stairs led to a bare, oblong room with sharp angles and stone slabs made of marble.

'Is it just me or did it get colder?' Jack grinned, shuddering in his greatcoat. It wasn't just him though, the room had gotten colder.

Owen arrived just in time for Tosh to tell them what room they were in.

'It was a morgue in the days when it was a funeral parlour and a storage cellar before then,' she said matter- of-factly. 'The Rift spike seems to be coming from two or three feet to your right.'

Jack glanced over and saw the remains of an arch that had been blasted apart by something, and a crack in the concrete floor. He walked towards it; reached out his hand. Cold burned his fingers like an electric shock and he leapt back with a growl, trying to shake the numbness out of his hand.

'God damnit!' he snarled.

'Jack!' Owen shouted. Gwen's eyes had suddenly rolled back in her head and she collapsed, limbs jerking violently.

'Gwen!' Jack cried, diving for her, his own superficial pain immediately forgotten in his desperate concern for her. 'Gwen! Can you hear me!?'

Owen injected something into her thigh but she just twitched harder, sobbing for oxygen. 'S'no good, Jack, I'll have to get her back to the Hub,' he muttered frantically.

'Right.' Jack lifted Gwen carefully and charged from the room, not even registering the fact that her arms were beating involuntarily against his chest. The mystery of the house could wait, and even if it couldn't, all that mattered at the moment was Gwen. He practically wrenched the door off the SUV when he placed her inside.

Every speed limit was broken on the way back to the Hub, Jack racing and raging through traffic with no regard for other road users. The SUV could withstand a head on collision with a high-speed truck and come away with little more than a dent.

Ianto was waiting outside the door when the black vehicle screeched to a halt, and drove it away without a word while Jack and Owen rushed Gwen down to the medical bay. She wasn't jerking anymore, but still her eyes rolled white and wild in her head and she choked for breath. Jack held the respirator over her mouth while Owen injected her with something. It didn't work.

'Why isn't it working?' Jack hollered.

'I don't know!' the medic snapped back. Gwen had suddenly gone limp and her eyes closed. She wasn't breathing anymore, even though her pulse was racing.

'Shit!' Jack growled, tearing the respirator away from her face and giving her mouth to mouth. If this were any other situation he would have lingered on her lips, revelling in her taste, her warmth. Now all that was slipping away and the only though occupying Jack's head was a desperate plea for her survival.

He breathed out, mouth clamped over hers, sending his will, his need, his life, into her with the air. He did it again. He willed her to breathe again.

Suddenly she choked, her hand grasping desperately for his as she inhaled deeply, like Jack himself when he returned from the dead. He could have kissed her, he was so happy. But he didn't. It wasn't his place. Feeling like he was betraying himself, he stood back to let Owen fuss over Gwen, though he wouldn't allow the connection of their hands to be broken.

'Jack,' she gasped.

'I'm here.' He was instantly at her side, easily stroking her hair to reassure her of his presence.

'What happened?' she asked, suddenly nervous of being laid out on Owen's autopsy table. Jack laid a soothing hand on her shoulder. It felt warm and reassuring.

'It's OK,' he said gently. 'You passed out at that house, and we got you here. You're fine.' She looked into his eyes to steady herself and find grounding, those beautiful blue eyes. But as always happened when he gazed at her with such intensity, such unmasked concern, she felt weak and queasy, and not in a bad way.

'If I may interrupt,' Owen cut in, 'I wouldn't mind taking some blood samples.' Gwen blushed as she realised just how long she had been staring at her boss. He grinned and pulled away with a monotone 'I'll be in my office'. Why did he always have to do that?

'Why don't you get some sleep on the sofa when we're done here?' the medic suggested while taking the blood. 'You look exhausted.' Gwen nodded mutely and limped over to the beaten up couch under the Torchwood sign. Somebody had already piled blankets and a pillow there for her, and she smiled imagining it was Jack. Of course it was.

At first Gwen slept dreamlessly, and all that she saw was welcoming folds of darkness wrapping her up in comfort. Then images flashed through her sight. Strange transparent creatures, glowing in the blackness, screeching faintly. She saw a red tear – the Rift – and felt herself zooming through it. Then there was cold, terrible unquenchable cold, and those things were inside her, burning cold and rippling through her flesh like worms. Words whispered angelically in her ear were derided by an undertone of mocking laughter. Ghosts. They were everywhere. They were drowning her.

'Gwen! Gwen!' Jack was shaking her gently, trying to wake her. She had suddenly convulsed again and he had flown down the stairs to snap her out of it. 'Gwen! Wake up!' His voice was alight with worry, and fear. One thing Jack never felt was fear. She spluttered awake, opening her eyes. They were darting about as if looking for an unseen enemy. Tears were running down her cheeks as Jack cupped her face in his hands. 'Gwen! Look at me. Are you OK?' He brushed the tears away with his thumbs and she whimpered at the memory of her dream. 'It's all right,' he soothed, drawing her to him. She felt safe in his warm arms, and the sweet smell of his breath drove the ghosts away as he rocked her gently. She faintly heard him tell the others to get back to work, and for that she was grateful. She didn't want them to see her like this.

They pulled apart after a few minutes, and Jack studied her tear streaked face once more. He didn't seem to mind that they had dropped onto the front of his shirt. 'What did you see Gwen?' he asked softly. She told him. He listened intently, a frown deepening on his forehead with every word. It felt like a relief to tell him about the dream, and for some strange reason, she felt that he had the power to make the monsters go away.

'Are you going to be OK now?' he asked. She nodded mutely and he kissed her forehead. 'Get some rest now, OK? And that's an order by the way,' he added, grinning. He rose and left her to settle back down into the blankets, and went to speak with Owen about the test results. Gwen watched his retreating form with strange feelings stirring inside her. She wanted him to come back and comfort 

her some more; just sit with her and talk and hold her while she slept. She shook these dangerous thoughts away and tried to think of Rhys instead. It didn't work nearly half as well, though she didn't want to admit it.

Meanwhile Jack was conversing quietly with Owen, who had found absolutely nothing wrong with Gwen in the blood tests. 'So we can assume that whatever it was, was down to the house,' the medic concluded. Jack nodded pensively, and turned away to grab his RAF greatcoat from its hanger. 'Oi! Where are you going?' Owen called after him.

'Where do you think? Whatever is at that house hurt a member of my team, and I'm going to find out what it is.' Jack turned and swept from the Hub, the cog door rolling back with sirens blazing. Tosh was secretly watching him go, wondering when he would finally admit his feelings for Gwen.

Thankyou for indulging my plot bunnies


	2. Chapter 2

Short chapters are never good, and I think this is the shortest I've ever written for any fic...I just wanted to keep the suspense going for a while longer - what'll hapen to Gwen? and so on and so forth. Also, sorry about the late update, but schoolwork's been murder ( you can wonder later if I meant that literally)

Anyway, please read my story 'We Found Torchwood 4!' because it needs reviews...and on with the story!

* * *

The cellar of the house looked the same now as it had when Jack had come with Owen and Gwen. Same floor, same walls. Still, what Gwen had seen in her dream...this was a fitting place for ghosts. The hand held computer that detected Rift activity was going crazy. This whole building was steeped in temporal energy. Something big had happened here, and something about the place, and the date, was niggling at the back of his mind. There was something significant about 1869, he was sure.

He ran the monitor over every surface in the room, noting how it spiked along the collapsed arch and on the tops of the tables. However, he didn't get to close to the centre of the room, because when he had reached under the arch was when Gwen had first seizured – not an experience he wanted to repeat in the foreseeable future.

There was a room extending beyond the morgue, what looked like a lower cellar - or a crypt, depending what period in history you were going for. It didn't extend very far though, and the Rift readings were lower in here. Moving back into the morgue, he noticed the pipes that once supplied gas for lighting were burst and blackened, as though they had exploded. It must have caused the fire in 1869, but what had caused the explosion?

As soon as Jack ran his fingers along the shattered pipe, it shuddered, and a faint, hissing scream echoed through the room. Immediately Jack drew his Webley revolver and span round to the arch. Something was trying to seep through the crack in the floor, flickering blue like a gas fire.

* * *

Back at the Hub, Gwen, who had been chatting comfortably enough to Tosh, suddenly went limp, the mug of coffee she was holding smashing apart on the floor.

* * *

A figure formed from the gaseous mixture, and rose up to peer round. It hissed again as though savouring its surroundings. It tried to move away from the arch, and screeched in a far-away voice as it was denied its whim.

'Who are you?' Jack called to it. 'What are you doing here?' It was completely transparent, and seemed to float. One of Gwen's ghosts.

The creature turned its head towards him. 'We are the Gelth,' it said. Its voice was haunting, beautiful, like a child's and yet so much more ancient.

'Who are the Gelth?' Jack asked, Webley still levelled though he knew it would do no good.

'Lost ones,' the Gelth replied. 'Ones without a home, wandering the in between places of time and space. We cannot exist elsewhere. Pity the Gelth!'

'What are you doing here?'

'There was a crack in the in between space, and we slipped through, to here. Pity the Gelth. We were trapped for so long under the world, but now we gain strength.'

Jack had a nasty feeling he knew where they drew their strength from. 'What did you do to my team member?' he demanded. 'Why did she collapse here?'

'She is the key, as before,' the Gelth replied. 'Give her to us.'

Jack laughed. 'No way! What is she the key to? And what do you mean, as before?'

'Pity the Gelth, give us the key. We are so few. And so weak. She will set us free!'

Jack was starting to get a bad feeling about this one, just as a voice spoke into his comm.

'Jack,' Tosh said urgently. 'Get back here, Gwen's having another seizure.'

'I'm right there,' he replied, pausing only to take a picture of the Gelth for Tosh to analyse. Twice was definitely more than a coincidence – these creatures were somehow for whatever was wrong with Gwen, and that only made him more determined to find out about it.

* * *

Review please :)


	3. Chapter 3

This story drives me crazy. I swear there's something about it that makes me write short chapters. This one's a little longer, and a long time coming, so thankyou to all the patient waiters out there. You rock!

Gwen sat on the couch pressing the frozen peas to her skull. For a top funded secret organisation, peas really shouldn't have been the best that they could come up with for curing concussion. Owen had checked her over, making sure there was no permanent damage, and as far as he could tell, there wasn't, but Gwen felt. . .different. Not in a good or a bad way, just different. It was like her senses were reaching out, like she was more aware of what was going on around her. Somehow, for instance, she could tell Tosh was angry with Owen for some reason, and Ianto was in a good mood. Jack came in the main entrance, she heard the cog door rolling back, but she couldn't see him. She heard him exchange hushed words with Owen.

_Of course she's okay, I'm a doctor aren't I?_

Where had that thought come from? It must be the concussion putting ideas in her head. She tried to stand so Jack could see she was fine, but felt dizzy, and had to steady herself on the arms of the worn Torchwood sofa.

Meanwhile, Jack decided that a different tactic was in order to defeat the Gelth. He had given Tosh the readouts from the palm computer so she could better identify the species. Ianto had been researching the house, specifically around the time it burned down, because Jack was sure there was something in his memory that was important. Something to do with the Doctor. . .

'Sir?' Ianto asked.

'Yes?'

'I've compiled some information if you want to take a look. I think you might find some of it quite interesting.'

'All right.' Jack called to everyone, ordering them into the conference room. He watched anxiously as Gwen tottered in.

'I'm fine Jack,' she assured him, speaking past the frozen peas she still pressed to her forehead. Jack wasn't convinced but let it pass – Gwen could be far too stubborn for her own good sometimes.

They all sat around the table, Ianto setting up the projector and slides.

'Are you sure you're okay Gwen?' Jack checked. She was swaying slightly.

'Fine,' Gwen muttered. _Watch it, Harkness, she's getting cranky._ Where did that thought come from? And why did it sound like Owen? She glanced up sharply just as the medic turned his head away. Gwen could swear he was muttering something, but his mouth was closed. Odd. Ianto was throwing her strange looks too.

Ianto dimmed the lights with a remote and turned the projector on. The blank screen filled with a slideshow of newspaper clippings, parish records, blueprints, and photographs of the house, both ancient and modern. Briefly he ran through the place's earlier history, how it had been a chemist, butcher, baker –

'Come on, Teaboy, give us something we haven't heard before,' Owen grumbled loudly. Toshiko shot a sharp glance at him and he shut up quickly.

'As I was about to say before the _doctor _interrupted,' Ianto continued. 'Was that things only start getting interesting when the building became a funeral home in 1847. A company called _Sneed & Co. _Up until April 1869 everything was quiet, then Mr. Sneed saw fit to install a gas heating and lighting system –'

'That fits with what Jack found at the site,' Tosh interrupted. 'The highest concentration of temporal energy was concentrated on the burst gas pipe in the cellar.'

'If I could continue?'

'Oh, yes, sorry Ianto.' Tosh dropped her eyes in embarrassment.

'Anyway, gas pipes. Lots of gas. It started just with clanging in the pipes, customers reporting seeing ghostly figures, that sort of thing. At first it was good for business, it helped with the atmosphere. Things escalated though, and by October, there were reports of. . .erm. . .zombies, for want of a better word.'

'Zombies?' Jack repeated. The amused look passing across his face was overshadowed by a frown. He was sure this story rang a bell somewhere. If only he could remember what it was. 1869 was the year he had come to earth to look for the Doctor. The Doctor. It was something the Doctor had told him. Mentally he shook himself and tuned back in to what Ianto was saying.

'Torchwood had a few files. They were going to move in the day after the fire broke out. Explosion is a better word really - it was put down to a gas leak.' Ianto clicked the remote and several pictures flashed up. The last one was a black and white grainy photograph of a man and a woman in front of a hearse carriage.

'So, what was interesting about that?' Owen muttered. 'Ghosts, funeral home, fire.'

'Look closely at the woman in the photo, Owen,' Ianto replied, peeved. The remote zoomed in on the photo, automatically refining the image.

There was an audible gasp from around the boardroom table as all eyes swivelled to Gwen. She was white as a sheet under the frozen peas, staring at an almost thirteen decades old photo of herself.

Dun-dun-dun!! Review please!

And by the way, I know my story is now obselete because of Journey's End, but I'm gonna keep going anyway


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter four guys! Sorry it took so long, but this story has refused to show me where it's going for a while now, but I've finally found the plot! Yet again though, this is a really short chapter.

* * *

Everyone started talking at once. They were so loud! Owen's voice was loudest, shouting so hard that it was almost as if the sound was _inside_ Gwen's skull instead of out of it. Tosh was twittering away like a sparrow and Ianto was just a low mumble in the background, but it still served to add to her headache. The only voice not in the mix was Jack's, though he sat there very quietly at the head of the table, staring at her as though she were something new and dangerous.

'Will everyone just SHUT UP!' she finally shouted, unable to take the verbal battering any more. She lifted her hands gingerly from her ears and glanced about. Her teammates all looked at her like she was mad, all except Jack, whose eye's had narrowed.

'Gwen, we weren't talking,' Tosh said kindly.

'Brilliant, she's finally cracked,' came a snide remark from the other side of the table.

'I'm not crazy, Owen!'

'I never said anything!' he protested, and at the same time _how did she know?_ These words didn't come from his mouth though; they were directly transported into her brain.

'Oh, Jack, what's happening to me?' she pleaded when she realised. Jack would know. Jack always knew.

He waited a while before replying. 'Somehow you've developed telepathy in the last twenty-four hours,' he said.

'Why can I only hear Owen?'

'You can hear them all – Owen's just the clearest because his mind is least disciplined.'

'Oi!'

'Why can't I hear you?'

Jack gave one of his mysterious little smiles. 'I've had training.' Gwen was sure it was something to do with his past before he came to Torchwood, however long ago that was.

It was just starting to sink in when the others' thoughts began crowding her again. Jack, seeing her discomfort, immediately ordered the others to different areas of the Hub to research various aspects of the case. Owen, who had nothing to do, went to study the brain of an alien rodent they had found the week before, muttering all the way, both verbally and mentally.

In the meantime, Jack led Gwen into his office and made her sit down, brewing her a cup of coffee from his own personal coffee maker (the bane of Ianto's life since it only made instant).

'Now I want you to stay there for a few hours and calm down,' he instructed, handing her the mug.

'But I'm –'

'You are not fine, Gwen, anyone can see that,' Jack cut across her. 'And if you go down there, you're likely to faint again, never mind if you go outside.' The Captain took his RAF coat off the back of his chair and holstered the Webley on his hip. 'Now, if you need anything, ask Ianto to get it for you. He worked for Torchwood One, and they all got basic psychic training, so his thoughts shouldn't bother you too much.' With one last concerned glance, he left his office, letting down the defences around his mind just enough to tell her to _stay exactly where you are; do not leave this room until I get back_, hoping that the shock of hearing his voice inside her head would be enough to stop her wandering off.

'Ianto, I want you to find out everything you can about this girl from 1869,' he called on his way out, picking up the keys from the thoughtful little dish beside the cog door (Ianto's doing – he had been sick of Jack and Owen complaining that they could never find the keys) and headed up to the garage. He was heading back to the burned out house. Again.

* * *

A nice little cliffie there, to remind me to update as well as to keep you lot in suspense! Reviews are welcome


End file.
